1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for processing a job and a control method and in particular, but not exclusively, for processing an imaging job in a cloud computing environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, techniques such as a cloud computing system and Software as a Service (SaaS) have come to be used in performing various processes on a server computer side. Cloud computing employs a large number of computing resources to perform distributed data conversion and data processing, so that requests from a number of clients can be processed at the same time. Further, there is a technique in which a series of processes to be performed on the server is realized by connecting tasks that are specified in detail and performing simultaneous parallel processing of the tasks. A plurality of jobs is thus scalably-processed, making full use of the characteristics of cloud computing. In such a process, it may become necessary to cooperate with an external web service that requires authentication and authorization, such as when submitting a document to a storage service.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-223739 discusses a technique for retrieving, when a user logs into the system, definition information of a data flow which is predefined. If there is an external service requiring authentication in the definition of the flow, and the authentication process has not yet been performed, a screen for logging into the external service is displayed, and a user is caused to input authentication information. As a result, the technique is capable of automatically performing the authentication process with respect to the external service to be used according to the predetermined flow.